Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

It seems like it’s been ages since there was a good, old-fashioned Rapture scare around here, but it is finally happening. Nowadays, the thinking among Christian sorts is that they are going to get Hoovered out of their sneakers by the thrumming turbine of God’s love and be upwelled into the company of angels on April 8th, the date of the next solar eclipse.
 
Sadly, if you have ordered golden Trump footwear and were looking forward to being foofed into Heaven out of them, they will not be arriving in time for the scheduled Apocalypse.
 
Not all Armageddon fans are thinking this solar eclipse is going to precipitate the Final Shakeout. After all, there have been a couple million* of them since the Earth and Moon took their present orbital positions. Most of them took place long before humans existed to crap in their loincloths over them. The first amphibious creatures ever might have been crawling onto the land during a solar eclipse. They just shrugged their shoulders, if they had any, at it, and kept on evolving. There’s even going to be another solar eclipse this year as well, but it’s only going to visible over the Pacific and Patagonia, so only penguins are likely to get Raptured over it.
 
The world-ending Planet Niburu is sitting this one out, too. It’s definitely not going to emerge from the outer reaches of the solar system and smush us by April 8th. People whose future plans include getting squashed out of existence by a dark sphere from outer space are just going about their business. "If it ain't Niburu, it ain't shit," is their take on the eclipse.
 
The April 8th Rapture does have its proponents, though. Many have noted that the path of totality passes through the hamlet of Rapture, Indiana, which town is eagerly encouraging visitors to go there to view the Eclipse, knowing that there’s a subset of them that are longing to get Raptured from Rapture. They’ll be in a spending mood, knowing that they’re only one eclipse away from ceasing to participate in the American economy forever, and the townspeople are looking forward to an influx of evangelical cash.
 
There’s a nice YouTube video from a pastor named Troy Brewer, who spends 33 minutes detailing the prophetic significance of the eclipse. He finds it important that the phenomenon enters the US at Eagle Pass, Texas, where Trump recently visited to make a strong stand against the ungodly immigrant hordes, goes through someplace called Omega, which means The End, and ends up in Salem, Massachusetts, where witches were burned in better and merrier times gone by. Jesus speaks directly to Troy, which confirms Our Savior’s taste for white men with pricey haircuts, expensive suits and fat asses. Troy touches on Moses, Jonah and Jim Jordan during the course of the video, which leads Democrats to start thinking, “If there’s anybody I’d like to see Raptured, it’s Jim Jordan."

Congressman Jordan is from Ohio, too, where the darkness will be thickest. Another coincidence? Rapture theorists think not.
 
Brewer also goes on about the prophetic importance of the number 24, which is mentioned serially in the Bible, which is the number this year ends in, and the number 4:8, which corresponds to April 8th, in a calendar that was adopted long after those prophets were dead. So, there’s room for a little skepticism there.
 
But I’ll make a prediction based on numerology myself. The Rapture will occur when exactly 24,000 Americans have only 24 dollars left in their checking accounts.
 
So if you're nervous about the Rapture and your place in it, and want to put it off for a while longer, send that money to me. Bless you for that.
 
*Just a guess. Loads, though. Ask your local astronomer for a more exact number.

The Rapture did not happen yesterday, September 22, 2023, although it was predicted to do so. The cynics jeered once again, because predictions of the Rapture have failed before--here, here, and here are a few examples of the Final Days not occurring when scheduled.
​
This time, though, Jesus has a good excuse for not returning in glory to judge the living and the dead—he was busy forgiving the Christian congressperson from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, for getting “eccentric,” (her word—it’s okay if you read “drunk,” instead) at a musical in Denver.
 
Boebert, an avowed Christian, advocate of family values and merging church and state, was videoed vaping, singing, groping with her date and giving security the finger as she was tossed out of the theatre on her Freedom Caucus tushie.
 
That’s a lot of Commandments to break before intermission, and then she pretty well fractured the Eighth when she tried denying it all, before being shown the videotape.
 
But, according to standard Christian theology, she can be forgiven if she asks for forgiveness, and when she did, Jesus had to strap on his best forgiving sandals to get the job done. “Me Christ,” he muttered. “Push back the Rapture again. This job is going to run through the weekend.”
 
Jesus’s main squeeze, Mary Magdalene, and his side chick, Joan of Arc, were already mad at Christ’s plans to incept the Apocalypse Saturday or Sunday, depending on what time zone the quivering sinners he was going to condemn to Hell lived in, since both had plans for His Body, as they usually did over the celestial weekend. His plan to spend it forgiving Lauren Boebert instead, and ruin some future weekend fun with a dreary old Final Day then, had both of them boiling over.
 
“What can I say?” Jesus told them. “She fucked a Democrat. You just can’t snap your fingers at that. Forgiving a loathsomely horny hypocrite who bleats about following Me is something I have to work myself up to. It’s not like forgiving masturbation, which I already have to do a couple times a day, in her case.”
 
“I still don’t see why it has to take the whole weekend,” Mary Magdalene said, bitterly.
 
“Being the Redeemer of the World is a job, you know. With great power comes great responsibility.”

“THAT’S SPIDERMAN! NOT YOU!”
 
“Yes, but I like it. I often wished I’d added that to the Sermon on the Mount, instead of leaving it for Marvel to snatch up. Now, run along. You can always go to Hell and watch Satan’s imps eviscerate Pat Robertson, like they do every day. You know you like that, and it helps work some of your anger out.”
 
So, Jesus is still forgiving Lauren Boebert while this is getting typed. That’s why we didn’t have the Rapture yesterday.
 
Lauren is going to be cool with Christ by Sunday. Whether she is going to be cool with her voters remains to be seen.

​According to the Washington Post, “A $100 million effort launched this year is blanketing cities and the web, aiming to redeem Jesus’ brand from the damage done by some of his followers.”
 
The campaign will have a web site that allows you to claim free swag if you welcome a stranger or forgive someone.
 
The reason the Son of Man and the King of Kings needs a PR campaign, according to Jon Lee, one of the PR men who proudly proclaim themselves Flacks for Jesus, is the behavior of His followers, who tend to want to kill abortionists, gays and occasionally Nancy Pelosi. Jesus, the re-branders claim, does not want His followers to do any of those things.
 
The campaign is going to culminate with a Super Bowl ad next February.
 
Fortunately for our readers, this column was privy to a strategy conference between a Flack for Jesus, hereafter abbreviated FFJ, and the Savior Himself.
 
FFJ: So, My Lord, we want to make this a real game-changer. Like, we’re going to get the whole guns, God, and America crowd to lay down their weapons and embrace the Gospel of love.
 
JESUS: Huh? I don’t mind those guys so much. I mean, they’ve got the heavily-armed sincerity thing going for them. And they know who they don’t want to bake cakes for.
 
FFJ: Let’s look at the big picture here. (Seems slightly self-conscious about talking to the Creator of the Universe about big pictures, but overcomes it) Judgement Day is on its way, and You don’t want to preside over an Eternal Kingdom of fat, angry diabetics.
 
JESUS: (Musing) I did say that I do not bring peace, but the sword. Of course, I had changed quite a bit of water into wine that day, and I was a little edgy that Mary Magdalene had missed her period, but, still, there is a Biblical foundation for the Church of the AR-15, sort of.
 
FFJ: But generally, You rolled peaceful. That’s the side of You we’re buffing up, here. The Super Bowl ad is going to cost us a fortune, but there’s no price we won’t pay to spread Your word.
 
JESUS: Does it really have to be the Super Bowl? I’m already sick of the Super Bowl. Bills and Eagles fans are annoying the Holy Crap out of me praying for their teams to be in it.
 
FFJ: (taking notes) So, it’s really going to be the Bills and the Eagles? Any insights into the point spread, oh My Lord?
 
JESUS: (Coldly) I don’t see where that has anything to do with this business.
 
FFJ: Right. So, I’m just spit balling here. What if You appear at halftime?
 
JESUS: When? Following Rihanna? Nobody wants to follow Rihanna. I don’t like it.
 
FFJ: Jesus, babe, if You descend from Heaven in a fiery cloud, and start the Rapture right before the second-half kickoff, nobody is going to give a shit about Rihanna…
 
JESUS: No, no, NO! I already appeared to an elderly couple in Scranton and promised them the Eagles would get the second-half kickoff. I don’t go back on My word. Besides, I already ix-nayed the Rapture. The current plan for Judgement Day is I come streaking into the view of the James Webb Space Telescope on board the Sweet Meteor of Doom, like Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Dr. Strangelove.  The meteor will smush into Earth a week later and eliminate all life on the planet, except for cockroaches. Get it over with, is My motto.
 
FFJ: Wow, that’s really intense. Kind of makes what we’re doing here look insignificant.
 
JESUS: Does, doesn’t it? I hate to leave anyone cold, though. You want an introduction to Cockroach Jesus?

The latest Rapture scare is well behind us now (It was supposed to be September 25th) but the possibility of the Rapture occurring and being left behind as a non-Rapturee is apparently causing trauma issues for young fundamentalists.
 
From CNN: Thirteen-year-old April Ajoy had a sense something wasn’t right. It was quiet in her Dallas house. Too quiet. Her brothers were gone. Her parents were gone. On her parents’ bed, a pile of her mother’s clothes signaled something terrifying.
Ajoy’s mind began churning, trying to remember, trying to make plans. When was the last time she had sinned? Should she refuse the mark of the beast? At least, she thought, if she was put to the guillotine during the time of tribulation, it would be a quick death.
 
You can see that making your young, probably innocent daughter, terrified of being guillotined is probably not a best parenting practice. But the Rapture can happen at any time, and almost any sin can disqualify a young girl from being sucked up into Heaven by the Roomba of God’s love. What offenses against the Lord were racing through April’s mind as she struggled with the possibility that everyone she knew, except herself, had been popped off the surface of the earth like they were blessed kernels of Orville Redenbacher’s? Had that momentary burst of lust she felt when her phone accidentally exposed her to the latest Korean boy-band video disqualified her from eternal life? Or was it that tiny twinge of affection she felt for Snitty Hanson, the cutest boy in her Zoom Communion class?
 
April thought she had begged for God’s forgiveness abjectly enough for both these offenses, but to her horror, her bleak solitude said otherwise. Little did she know that her mother had merely gone to a fellow Christian wife’s house for a chaste afternoon of wearing modest clothing and baking pies, and her father was raising a barn and thinking about eating pie afterwards, and her brothers had not left the house at all, but had instead found private corners in which to masturbate, which young Evangelical men have to do even more stealthily than regular young guys.
 
Imagine her relief when she spotted her brother returning the box of Kleenex to its usual spot in the bathroom. Still, she could not be entirely sure that the Rapture had not happened until her dad came home, smelling of sawdust and her mother returned, reeking of pie, and also yelling at her for not doing the pile of laundry she had left on the bed.
 
I want to tell April that I know someone who felt a similar pain. It was the love of my life, who once came upon an empty chair with an empty pair of my shorts on it, and thought briefly I might have been blown aloft into the company of angels. You can read about her reaction here.
 
Her disappointment was far less than April’s, though, because she’s Jewish and immune from the Rapture. There was no pressure on her to regret her sins, because no matter how few they might be, Jesus is not beaming her up into bliss. She was a little upset when I returned and told her that. When God is sucking up the saved souls of Earth like they were a Big Gulp, even when He comes to the end of His list, and His divine straw is making that slurping sound on the bottom of the cup, no Jews are going to be included.
 
Hey, I don’t make the rules.
 
But before she texted me, asking where the hell I was, she did wonder if I had made coffee before God had whacked me into eternity with the pickleball racket of His love, and saw that I had.
 
And she saw that it was good.

According to “prominent Christian numerologist” David Meade, the moment of the Rapture has been determined, and it is…TODAY! 
 
Yes, even as you read these sinful words, your Christian neighbors are getting Hoovered into Heaven and competing with the souls of aborted fetuses for the embrace of Jesus Christ!
 
You’re really hating this, because you’ve been stuck in the house for a month and you’ve been just daydreaming about going to a Mexican restaurant again, but your believer friends are getting out of quarantine and heading straight for eternal glory, which beats that basket of fresh, piping hot tortilla chips with salsa fresca your mouth’s been watering for like a gong! You could have read a little more Bible and watched a little less porn and you’d be on your way to the Pearlies, too, but too late now.
 
Maybe you’re thinking “Who is this guy David Meade and what’s a Christian numerologist anyway?” I’d say, ask him, but he was probably the first guy Raptured since he was clued in on it by his prophecy. He was likely Raptured fully dressed in a tasteful, understated business suit because he knew it was coming, whereas many worthy souls are getting raptured in their bathrobes and underwear, because that’s all they’ve been wearing for the last four weeks.
 
To answer your question, however, a Christian numerologist is the same as any other numerologist, except that Christian numerologists don’t use certain numbers when they’re numerologying, like 666, which is the number of the Beast. Or 69, which is the number of oral sex, or 44, which is the number of Barack Obama.
 
This is Meade’s prediction: During this time frame, on April 23, 2018 the moon appears under the feet of the Constellation Virgo.
The Sun appears to precisely clothe Virgo… Jupiter is birthed on April 08, 2018.
The 12 stars at that date include the nine stars of Leo, and the three planetary alignments of Mercury, Venus and Mars – which combine to make a count of 12 stars on the head of Virgo.
Thus the constellations Virgo, Leo and Serpens-Ophiuchus represent a unique once-in-a-century sign exactly as depicted in the 12th chapter of Revelation. This is our time marker.
 
“Hmm,” you might be thinking. “That sounds more like astrology, instead of numerology, which makes it all the more convincing. I’d better go feed my Christian neighbor’s cat, since she has no doubt been slurped up into eternal life. My neighbor, not her cat, that is.”
 
Also—Nibiru! The Death Planet will finally show, causing earthquakes and volcanoes, because that’s what Nibiru does.
 
“Wait a second,” you might say. “Nibiru? First numerology, then astrology, then the doom planet Nibiru? Kind of sounds like Meade’s throwing everything he can think of into some kind of apocalyptic gumbo.”
 
Whatever. I mean, I know I’m not getting Raptured, because I’m a pretty bad Christian. And the girl is not going to get Raptured, because she’s such a bad Christian she’s a Jew. But there are several reverent older women on our corner of the block I have not seen yet today. Now, maybe it’s because it’s only eight AM and I haven’t left the house yet, but on the other hand, the Rapture is NOW.
 
I’m buying cat food.

Chaos reigned in Washington, DC today immediately following the resignation of Donald Trump, which most observers thought was inevitable after geriatric screwup Rudy Giuliani accidentally posted the pee tapes to Instagram.
 
Trump’s resignation, delivered on Twitter, which consisted of two sentences, “I’m outta here. Thanks for the Emulomints,” was vague enough that no one even went looking for the Vice President for several hours. It was not until Air Force One was spotted on a straight path to Russian air space that anyone realized that Trump had skedaddled out of the highest office in the land, and when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts went looking for Pence to swear him in as #46, the VP was nowhere to be found. Another crucial half hour passed before Pence’s Secret Service detail confessed shamefacedly that Pence had been Raptured right before their eyes.
 
“He suddenly sprouted a big set of angel wings and just flapped off towards Heaven,” one of the embarrassed agents said. “I know we’re supposed to take a bullet for the people we protect, but none of us were ready for this. I mean, one of the guys tried to grab him by the shoes, but he couldn’t hold on. All that’s left of Pence in this world is one size 10 1/2 wingtip.”
 
Defense Department officials confirmed that the Rapture had indeed taken place. “People are missing from all over the world, except in America. It seems that possibly the only person Raptured here was Pence, although both Nick Foles and Miley Cyrus can’t be found, either. Even the Vice President’s wife is busy at her day job, teaching art and homophobia to six-year-olds. Everyone else in the US was Left Behind because they were unworthy. We blame PornHub.”
 
Roberts, conscious of his constitutional duty, went straight away to the Capitol and swore in Pelosi as President. Pandemonium broke out in both parties, as the Republicans in the Senate tried to get a resolution passed declaring Pelosi the Antichrist. It failed because some of the Senators wanted to vote for Beto O’Rourke instead. Still others wanted Mitt Romney. “Hey, Mitt really wants to be something,” one of his backers explained. In the meantime, the Democrats went into full backstabbing mode over who was going to be the next Speaker of the House.
 
Pelosi proved to be a decisive leader, however. As her first act, she appealed to NATO to shoot down Air Force One before it could make it to Moscow. The Norwegian Air Force was more than happy to comply. “Fucking aye,” was their official response, and Trump’s plane was soon a debris field in the North Atlantic. Large numbers of state secrets, gold-plated urinals and bundles of cash were being recovered, along with multiple cheeseburgers, from the choppy waters off the Norwegian coast.
 
Pelosi will address the nation tonight. The title of her speech is said to be, “The End Times Will Be the Best Times, Thanks to the Democratic Party, And Also, I Need A New Plane.”
 
No other details are available as of this writing.

​When life gets weary over here, which happens because Trump and his clown car of friends and Cabinet members are doing and saying more stupid things in real life than this column can invent and turn into parody, it’s time to log into raptureready.com again.
 
Things haven’t changed much over there—the Rapture is just as imminent as it was two years ago. The quote from Jesus—“Behold, I come quickly”—which some of us think sounds like he’s been having sex with Mary Magdalene again, but actually means he’s getting ready to siphon His chosen souls into Heaven—is still on the landing page, even though it’s been two thousand years since He said that. And He probably said it in a bar.
 
The Rapture App is no longer linked to on the front page. The speculation here is that the whole IT department at raptureready.com used it to Rapture themselves prematurely, and now there is no one there to do the updates on it.
 
The Post-Rapture Survival Guide is still there, which we studied keenly, because no one in this household has any confidence that they will be Raptured. Mixed in with the other Apocalyptic gibberish is some valuable advice—put together seven years’ worth of canned gods, gold, ammo and bottled water, because God is going to be sending some huge-ass meteors to hit the Earth and mess it up big time. Of course, if one lands on your head, the bottled water isn’t going to do you much good, even if you bought a couple pallets worth at Costco. Which raises the theological point—if you die after the Rapture but before the Return, what happens to your soul?
 
We might have to bring back limbo.
 
If you are alive during the Final Tribulation, you might not even be aware of it, because it doesn’t sound much shittier than everyday life on Earth, with the exception of those meteors.  If God really did invent mankind, He apparently did it with the express aim of tormenting us full-time, in this column’s opinion, and if He turns it up a notch right before Judgement Day, we might not even notice.
 
What you should start looking for, though, is letters left behind by those who were Raptured.  People are writing them as you read this. There’s a selection of them on raptureready.com, and they’re not all of the “neener neener neener, I’m in Heaven and you’re going to Hell,” variety, although some of them are. Most of them contain assurances that the writers have not been kidnapped by aliens, as some of us might believe when they disappear, especially if Jesus makes little machine gun noises--pew! pew! pew!—as He wads the elect into eternal glory.
 
People who have been kidnapped by aliens are completely fucked, apparently.
 
But if you live with somebody who thinks they’re going to be Raptured, they’ve probably written you a letter, and they probably printed it out, because there’s no assurances that the Internet will be around after the Rapture. They can’t have hidden it too well, either, because they want you to find it after they’ve taken the escalator of Jesus into the clouds. So, look for it now, because it’s the first thing that they’re going to tear up if they miss the Rapture bus.
 
And read it. Out loud at Thanksgiving dinner, if that’s your style.
 
Yeah, you’re going to Hell. Might as well enjoy the ride.

We* are barely getting this column written today because of the volume of material we had to absorb upon our discovery of raptureready.com, a website devoted to calculating the probability of the Rapture happening soon. Which it thinks is real soon. Next weekend is not out of the question.

At the top of every page in Rapture Ready is emblazoned “Behold, I come quickly,” which sounds like a line from a cheesy porn clip but which actually comes from the Bible, and is purported to have been said by one Jesus Christ (possible middle initial H) 2,000 years ago.

Now, 2,000 years is not quickly in any sense but the geological one. If you have to wait fifteen minutes for a ride from Lyft in this modern age, you start to get a touch browned off. Just relax. A few minutes on Rapture Ready is enough to convince anyone that is that the Rapture will be more complicated than Lyft.

Rapture Ready calculates that the current Rapture index is 185, which wouldn't be shit for the Dow Jones, but the RI has never been higher, indicating that the faithful could at any minute be Hooverized into Heaven by the humming suction of God’s love.

How is the RI figured out with such mathematical precision? There are forty-five separate categories, last updated as of October 16th, which, added together, form the Index. There are obvious ones, like Israel, Volcanoes, False Christs, and the Mark of the Beast, but there are also ones the average person would never think had Apocalyptic significance, like the interest and unemployment rates. I am not sure whether Jesus would prefer to return to a world of full employment or not, but it’s possible. They had full employment back in His day, because then they had slavery, the old-school way to keep the workforce topped off.

There are pages of FAQ’s. Some of them possibly are not so frequently asked, like, Is God still making angels today? (Answer: No) Others are questions that might occur to anybody who was chilling with their End Times homies, like, Is the Pope the Antichrist?  (Probably not, but he and the AC are going to be major, major bros.)

There is The Mr. Antichrist Evil pageant, which provides low-resolution pics of the contenders for that crown, which include Bill Gates, Prince Charles, and Obama (natch).

There are links a-plenty, including Information for Those Left Behind, which all of you are going to need, because you probably will be Left Behind just for reading this, and Rapture Ready Wallpaper for your computer, so that if you are foofed aloft by God’s mercy while surfing the Net, your PC will provide your more sinful contemporaries a clue as to where you’ve gone. There’s also The Tribulation Hour, which sounds like a cozy little podcast about the end of all things.

And, sweet Mother of God, there is an app. Yes, there is now an app for the end of the world. It’s here: http://raptureplanb.com/

I’m downloading it now.

*Really, it’s only me that writes this stuff. Sometimes I’m just a sucker for the editorial "we."

The mysterious planet Niburu is coming back to squash the life off of Earth next week, so once again my advice is don’t buy season tickets to anything.

Niburu, which loosely translates as “a massive lump of bullshit in space,” was scheduled to demolish our planet in 2003, 2012 and 2015, and also earlier this year, but failed to show up. Who knows why? Possibly it got behind on its schedule of demolishing other planets. This could happen for any number of reasons, like other planets deserving demolishing more than us (I admit, this is highly unlikely). Possibly it left a tool it needed for the job back at the shop. This is what happened to the air-conditioning guy who was supposed to fix our AC on a hundred-degree day last week, so if it happened to cosmic wanderer like Niburu, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Anyway, the date’s been set—September 23rd. That is when Niburu will appear, bright, chipper and eager to get the job done, on our doorstep, and commence flattening us out of existence, according to author David Meade. Meade claims that everything on Earth will be destroyed, up to and including the unnecessary vowel at the end of his name.  The event has been predicted by both the Bible and the Great Pyramid, according to Meade, who apparently found a date circled in Revelations that everyone else had missed, and also knows what “September 23, 2017,” looks like in hieroglyphics. He also gives the Pyramid builders credit for making a prediction based on a calendar that wouldn’t be invented for several thousands of years.

Naturally, the fake news media is publishing the anti-Niburu propaganda being pushed by people like astronomers and NASA, who claim Niburu doesn’t exist and no planetary collision will happen on the 23rd. If you're gullible enough to believe these scientist types, you could be having unpleasant thoughts like, hey, maybe the ancient prophets didn't know dick about the future.

In other words, they were just like us, only a more unwashed and unshaven and subject to a lot of old-school diseases that we're too modern to have. 

It's easy for these for these astrophysicist characters to pooh-pooh Niburu, while they’re hiding behind their advanced degrees, whiteboards full of equations nobody but them will ever understand, and their telescopes, but if you're tempted to believe them, remember—these are the same people who think the Big Bang is something other than a popular TV comedy. Here's a gratuitous link to a lingerie pic of Kaley Cuoco to prove my point.

Not to mention they faked the moon landings.

We’ve had a good many Apocalypses lately, which this column strongly supports. The Blood Moons were supposed to presage the Second Coming, because they were visible from the USA, and the total eclipse was also supposed to prefigure the end of everything, also because it rolled across America. We Americans can be proud, because God obviously is giving us extra notice that He is coming soon to whomp the crap out of our planet, a sign of His love for our nation.

In fact, all of these heavenly portents crowding in on us leads me, as a thinker, to propose an axiom:

ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE FUCKING SKY IS A PRELUDE TO THE APOCALYPSE!

You can’t go wrong with that. Of course, Jesus appearing on top of the Great Pyramid holding the original stone tablets of the 10 Commandments, or even a copy of People magazine, would signal a trending Doomsday also.

But I wouldn’t count on that. 

There is nothing this column enjoys more than a good end-of-the-world scare, and while nothing compared to the great apocalypses of the Mayans and the Rapturists, who both foresaw the end of the world in 2012, is scheduled for this year, 2017 does have a few noteworthy end time predictions.

The most popular is that the August total eclipse of the sun will presage the Second Coming, when Jesus finally returns and judges all seven and a half billion of us. The logistics of this seem immense, and, historically, mass trials have never demonstrated much in the way of impartial justice. It’s probably why it’s taken the Son of God 2,000 years of tinkering to come up with a foolproof plan to get it all done in one Judgement Day.

I’m sure when it goes down we will all appreciate his efforts, but the two millenniums of suspense are killing us.

Of course, there have been a lot of solar eclipses since 33 AD, although Google failed to supply us with an exact number, and none of them so far have been world destroyers. The reason the faithful feel this one will wipe out humanity is that it will be visible across the length of the USA and the United Kingdom, although, like all solar eclipses, only on a narrow track across the two nations, which track seems to avoid the Bible Belt entirely, but that doesn’t keep believers from pining for all human closure. The prediction is based on the Biblical statement that “A darkness will fall across the land,” before all the worthiest souls get juiced up into heaven by the blender of God’s love.

The importance of the American nation and the English-speaking world in Christian prophecy is reflected by the fact that they are mentioned in the Bible zero times. Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me. You’ll find a psalm that contains convenient, quick recipes for microwaved meals before you’ll find anything concerning the USA. That doesn’t keep American Christians from thinking that when humanity ends, they’re going to have the front-row seats.

If you don’t think American exceptionalism will be a factor on Doomsday, you can take heart in the predication of Matteo Tafuri, the “Italian Nostradamus.” Why Tafuri merits this title is a mystery to me, since Nostradamus predicted the future more often than he had a hot lunch, and Tafuri only made one prediction, that being that when the southern Italian town of Salerno gets snow for two days in a row, that’s when God is going to ix-nay mankind’s future.

This just happened. When they get out the snow shovels out in Salerno, it’s time to kiss your ass goodbye, according to the late Tafuri, so don’t buy season tickets to anything.

Also, a statue of the Virgin has been observed crying in Macedonia. Highly emotional sculptures are a rarity indeed, and Macedonian believers think the previously inexpressive hunk of marble’s collapse into teary vulnerability means our Earth is getting eighty-sixed from the company of planets. No one has tried dissolving a little Zoloft in the holy water, but that’s our suggestion.

Finally, the dodgy planet Nibiru is back in the global ass-kicking picture. You may remember Nibiru from 2012, when it was thought to be ready to whomp us into fragments as part of the Mayan end of times. But having failed to validate the Mayans’ prediction doesn’t mean that Nibiru has dropped out of contention to deliver us a fatal blow. No, Nibiru is the Ronda Rousey of world-ending, always ready to get up off the mat and make a failed comeback attempt. The most recent one happened last February,​ when it no-showed again, rendering yet another prophet still, like the rest of us, breathing. He’s disappointed about that, but those of us looking forward to life after Groundhog Day are okay with it.

Another prognosticator has Nibiru whamming into us in October of this year instead, but we’ve lost all faith in Niburu over here. While other planets spin in their orbits like clockwork, making their paths predictable for millennia in advance, Nibiru wallows around the heavens like it’s been playing a drinking game involving shots of Jägermeister. Stumbling back and forth across the orbits of other planets doesn’t make it “mysterious.” It just makes it unreliable. It’s just as likely to crash into Venus or Mars as here, or just weave around the asteroid belt looking for a karaoke bar, before finally stumbling home and falling asleep on the bathroom floor.
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So, maybe no Doomsday this year. Disappointed? There’s always 2018.